THE MIMETIKS

dear all –

some time back (like february of last year) you may remember Kyle and I were working on music for his sister’s senior theatre/dance thesis. well since i’m continually out of phase with such things i… was, uh, out of phase with it. and so i only just found out about the footage of the completed piece being available at googlevideos.

i had to wait one night to post this because, believe it or not, i hadn’t ever seen the finished production. the weekend of the event i think i had to play a gig in like Waubashau, NY or something… so i missed it. but wow. its very hip to see it all come together as it does here.

in the end Kyle and I were working from a rehearsal tape with Emma (Jaster) sort of running through bits of the piece and talking through the bits that weren’t yet certain/choreographed/blocked.

i don’t recall there being any props in the video we saw. it was all imaginary. and i also had no clue what the title meant (its apparently in a different language) but so: without any more nonsense from me. the video. the piece.

ceci n’est pa la lune

Yo akie (aka the fat one aka fats) here.

just a bit of fun and games while jaster and i are working on some new… music for an apartment stuff… please enjoy. this is from a opening gig i did at in Marlboro for Taylor Eigsti and Julian Lage (it was a killer show!)

this was the set closer. and if you know me, i like to end sets with a feeling of: “oh… well…” back in the Foundation days we used to call it “the knock out music.” (which normally came after a long period of high energy explosiveness we used to call “the hay makers.”)

so. you may recognize some of this medley from mimetiks shows… with an extra-special ending thrown in. but can you name the song, my dearies?….

fats out.

akie

Hey folks,

well the sudden and unexpected snowiness prevented me from getting to kyle’s in time to do our Saje hit. still i made it over in good enough time for us to futz around with the music software and pull out the old keyboards and things.

what will come of this? who can say…

(…though that who might be wise to mention, first, that we are once again making music — in an apartment.)

(akie)

Good morning soul singers:

Akie here again. Just checking in before the Thanksgiving break. We should be back at November’s end with some hip new music and ideas and concepts and all that good stuff. for now, i give you a track i don’t THINK we’ve released yet. from an aborted Hip Hop Open Mic project at Brooklyn Exposure. We were supposed to play background music to a gaggle of MCs. but no MCs showed up. so i kyle told me to sing the night out. tired and un-enthused as i was, i did so. The drummer for that night was the young gun, Aaron ‘juse’ Steele. and so, we got a little something nice from the occasion.
Expect to hear more from Aaron in future. Need I speak to significance of the name?

without further ado:

Valentines Day

peace,
Fats

its wednesday, finally! and some things keep going well and something just keep going. i’m gonna keep it brief because there is much to be done today. so…. how about something unexpected?

acoustic, even?

the closer/anthem

akie(!)

hey all!

yeah we’re taking a break from gigging for a couple of weeks to get our heads together. and get our plans set for the winter. some of us (the fat one) have to get ready to hibernate, others have to insulate their french doors, or baby-oil massage their drum heads. we need to do some writing. and some recording. and other things as well. so the beginning of novemeber will be a Mimetiks-less zone. we will NOT be at Saje on for at least the first two Sundays of the month. and probably not at Brooklyn Exposure, either.

have no fear, dear listeners, i will keep you a breast of the situation. and stop by with timely quotations and music-gifts. all free as usual. free and clear and under control.

peace,
akie (the fat one)

Its been a crazy couple of weeks, good people. recently we returned to Brooklyn Exposure to play a big-n-loud nighttime show. and it was, as always, liberating and maddening and exciting and peculiar. we may begin a series of shows there as October wears on.

but that’s future news. what’s hip right now is right now. and right now I’m talking about the 16th of September. When the planets aligned in such a way that when Luke, Kyle, and I hit for our usual sunday brunch at Saje, we were seeing red. the tunes all came alive of their own accord and thrust us, unsuspectingly in to funky paradise.

it sounded so nice to our ears that we figured, O what the hell. Let’s put the entire show up and damn brevity. (needless to say it took some time to get it all mixed down right and uploaded… but the wait is over. its been not quite a month, but well over a fortnight.)

so without further ado: i give you the entire concert from 9.16.07 at the Saje Cafe — in Brooklyn.

—-

1. the flood

2. good to my soul

3. waiting for you

4. impromptu/bittergarden#4

5. we’ll know

6. watchout

7. autumn nocturne

8. opus 916

9. the keeper

as if in prescient preparation for this day, sunday’s show was a stripped down duo-fest. because luke had a gig elsewhere Kyle and I showed up at Saje on the nineteenth of august with little to do. we started out, infact, thinking it wouldn’t be worth recording the show. off-handedly jaster suggested to me we do some jazzy stuff. little did he know: i was still in jazz-mode full-tilt because of gigs on friday and saturday night. i brought in the music stand and the leadsheets and even some “obscure” lyrics for the fun of things.

well the first set went so well, that we decided to break and try to jimmy something up so that we could record. apparently some cords were missing. and, the rest is probably best categorized under: music for apartments - acoustic.

it had been my wish to simply post the entirety of the two sets we did manage to record from sunday. but when i thought about it, i realized that might be a hell of a lot of material to listen to. to write about, etc, etc. so we’ll hold on to it for later occasions. (it’ll come in handy, i’m sure…)

so highlights, anyone?

###

sundaykindoflove
this one was just so necessary. i don’t see how we could have not played this tune. i found the leadsheet giving us the somewhat confusing bridge and we launched into it. one of the best compliments you can receive for such a gambit is that it “looked” like we were reading it, but people weren’t sure… because it sounded like something we’d played before. well, we have and we haven’t. so i hope this serves as a hint to the kind vibe that afternoon.

lately
i recently learned this one for a gig at the Monticello casino in Liberty, NY. its one of Stevie’s greatest ballads. why i haven’t just sat down and learned the entire Wonder catalogue… well i don’t know. listen for the super-ECM-like-piano-solo… very period. like played by a white guy in a dashiki and in the 70s. (don’t think i don’t work on odd shit like that)

valentinesday medley
its just a favorite. we’ve been doing this one since the last october, when we figured out the arrangement during a weeklong journey to maine and back again. (see entry the shipMimetik)

bodyandsoul
Osamu is the sunday morning chef at Saje. and a solid jazz guitarist in his own right. during the first set break he said noticed we were going for the jazzier side of things. he asked if we did Body and Soul. to be honest, i don’t think i’ve ever sung the song. but i have accompanied people on it dozens of times, and i love to call it at jam sessions. i happened to have the lyrics handy… so we did it.
… and the food was excellent.

listenatall
during the course of the afternoon we did generate some new original material. to keep things on the up and up, we figured it might be nice to have originals in the mix. don’t want to just become a lounge band. or a soul cover duo. so listenatall. remember this one, anyone? bittergarden? bembe? ah well, whatever.

a lot. but, since we’ve opted to succumb…this should be linked to from our blog. thanks to some guy named rod

Sorry All Who Are Concerned. This coming sunday (the 29th of July) the Mimetiks will not be playing at Saje. We will be in Vermont as a good friend of ours gets married and then rushing back to the city for private evening party in the city. So — those of you in need of the live fix - we’ll be back at it next Sunday (the 5th of August) with old tunes, new tunes, and the same ole’ gusto.

to hold you over… here’s a little something we borrowed from Miles Davis.

Akie